


You Were Just Setting Sail

by redqueentheory, Woven_Gulch



Series: I'm With the Band [16]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: (art goodfriend voice), Alcohol, Canonical Character Death, Friendship, Gen, Grief, Loss, Post-Finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-22
Updated: 2018-04-22
Packaged: 2019-04-26 06:23:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14396169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redqueentheory/pseuds/redqueentheory, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Woven_Gulch/pseuds/Woven_Gulch
Summary: Brad drinks to an old friend. Killian asks for his help.





	You Were Just Setting Sail

It's not necessarily the weirdest thing Brad's dealt with in organising this bizarre outfit, but it comes pretty damn close.  
  
When the Director leaves him an urgent message to meet her at his office the day after Candlenights, he doesn't mind. He’s on call, and theirs is a chaotic business. When he finds out it’s to process paperwork for a new employee, he thinks it’s a bit odd, but the Bureau’s mission never sleeps, apparently. Then he discovers the new employee is a– ghost robot? And he's, well. Taken aback. And a little confused, all told - there’s definitely nothing in the employment regulations for this. It had been hard enough dealing with the McDonald kid.  
  
But Brad is a professional, and he's hardly about to start up with the existential questions in his office with his boss and assorted colleagues for an audience. He blinks and extends a hand for her to shake instead, and Killian and Carey both smile goofily as he pulls out the paperwork and points out the places where Noelle - NO-3113? - has to sign, or at least append a scratchy black X.  
  
They're halfway through the on-boarding kit when Carey bursts out, "Okay, it's killing me, what the heck is that smell? Smells like apples going off."  
  
"Oh," Brad says, startled. "Apologies, I'm brewing cider, it's probably my cl-"  
  
" _Cider_!" NO-3113 (Noelle? Gods, he's just going to think of her as Noelle) bursts out excitedly. "You make cider? I used to make cider!"  
  
"I- it's a hobby," he manages, bemused. He supposes this is the least strange thing about this situation, if he takes a step back to really think about it. The robot quivers in the middle of the room, then starts bombarding him with questions about the blend of varieties, how he presses the pulp on the moon, filtering, managing fermentation. It's actually very sweet, and he finds himself wondering who she was before she was - this, and how this happened to her, and whether it's fair for Lucretia to be leveraging the enthusiasm of a dead girl trapped in a robot to find these magic cups, or whatever they are.  
  
He doesn't say any of this, but he does let Noelle natter away while he's finalising her forms, promises to try a couple of techniques - "Redcheek family specials!" - for his next batch, let her know how they go. There's a stumble when she offers to taste and then immediately says "Oh, but I can't-" and falls silent, but Killian shoots him a look and then says, "That's ok, we can describe 'em to you," and she seems to perk up again.  
  
He heads back to his apartment afterwards still in a state of vague confusion, wondering how on earth he ended up somewhere like this. But he doesn't lose any more time on it, assuming this will be the end of his strange interaction with a haunted ex-Miller creation.  
  
It isn't. Brad bumps into Noelle a few more times over the next few weeks, and impossibly finds himself developing a bizarre connection with her, much to his own confusion. He does try her techniques; some work, some decisively do not, but after a few conversations in the quadrangle they both figure out it has to do with the air pressure not being the same as on the planet's surface. He adjusts, accordingly, and when Killian tries part of the next batch and describes it to Noelle as "Like. Wow, it's like sunshine and forests," Noelle sighs wistfully and says, "Yeah, that's definitely the Redcheek special."  
  
He finds himself looking forward to their impromptu discussions, enjoying the novelty of speaking to someone about his weird little hobby. But then his focus shifts, narrows, and he gets caught up in a bright shiny new hobby - fucking a Reclaimer. He hasn't managed to chat to Noelle in weeks the day everything goes to hell in a handbasket.  
  
He's not there. He doesn't know, doesn't get to see what she did. He was - preoccupied with trying to hit an enemy he couldn’t see, he thinks to himself sardonically, plasters over something darker with black humour. It's only when Killian shows up to his apartment, a week or two after the dust has settled, with a bottle of whisky and a grim expression that he thinks about Noelle again at all. (He’d been wholly concerned with conciliatory calls to the families of employees who’d died for the _first_ time that day).

Killian gives him the rundown as efficiently as possible, but it’s still awful. All of his initial discomfort at Noelle’s _recruitment_ transforms into horrified sadness about how things ended for her. 

"I want to give her a proper funeral," Killian says, bracing her hands on the edge of his kitchen counter and staring into the middle distance, somewhere just beyond his ear, jaw working. "One of ours. You gotta witness."  
  
He shakes his head, crosses his arms, fends off how gruesomely raw the thought of it makes him feel by falling back on awkward formality. "Carey-"  
  
"Carey won't do it," Killian says, shortly. "Different traditions. You're the only other orc who was close to her."

“She wasn’t an orc,” he can’t help but point out. There are rules about this sort of thing.

“Point me in the direction of the ghost robot funeral tradition and I’ll happily do that,” Killian says sharply, and then sighs. “Look, Brad... I want to say goodbye to her in a way that feels familiar.” She reaches over to grab his shoulder. “I think it’d be good for you, too.”

He sighs, not about to argue the point when she's gone. "All right." He squints at her. "When?"  
  
***

Killian hears him before she sees him, cresting a dune and following the dirge being carried up and along the shore of the Stillwater Sea. She carefully picks her way down the ridge and across the shore, juggling a handful of rocks in one arm, and balancing a bottle of dragonborn ale in the other. The damp ground sinks under her with each step as she approaches the orc sitting near the unnaturally still water, murmuring a tune that puts her nerves on edge and carefully arranging a ring of stones where the water meets the sand.  
  
"My apologies," he mutters, stilted and formal as ever. "I can clear out, give you some privacy, if you'd like." He moves to get to his feet.  
  
"Don't be an idiot," she retorts softly, settling down next to him. He pauses for just a moment before easing back down onto the sand. The stones she's brought with her slide from the crook of her arm into the loose pile between them, and she uses her now free hand to uncork the bottle she had swiped on her way out of the Rites. _No_ , she reminds herself, _the_ _memorial_.  
  
They sit quietly for a while, sifting through the pile for the largest, flattest stones to build up from. Killian pulls from her satchel a fuse, now dim and lifeless, and places it in the center of the ring.  
  
"I know it's not her, not anymore," she mutters, exerting an obvious effort to keep her voice even.  
  
Brad rests a hand on her shoulder, firm and comforting, still staring out over the water.  
  
They work silently, carefully stacking rocks over the fuse. An old orcish tradition, burying warriors where they were slain in battle. It had fallen out of practice centuries ago, considered to be a relic of a less civilized time, but it wasn't unusual to see small cairns built by friends and family after proper burial rites were performed. With the judge destroyed and Lucas's lab hauled out of the shallows of the sea, this would be the only indication that a battle had happened here at all.  
  
Killian settles back in the sand, taking a long drag from the bottle before gesturing in Brad's direction. He waves her off. "Haven't touched anything Dragonborn brewed since last Candlenights." Instead he lifts an unlabeled bottle of his own. Killian can smell apples.

“Is that-“ she says, tentative.

Brad nods - seems more animated for a moment. “One of the first batch I - well, we perfected, I suppose.” He tips it to the cairn. “She was very patient with my experimenting.”

Killian holds out her hand and Brad gives her the bottle - his movements careful, handling it like something fragile and precious, which she supposes it is. She takes it in kind, sips, and it is _very_ good; balanced, crisp, unmistakably homemade.

She nearly comes out with some kind of platitude but it just don’t seem right. She tips the bottle instead, hands it back, and they sit in companionable silence for some time, trading the drinks back and forth and staring beyond the cairn to the horizon as the sun sets.

Finally, emboldened by the cider and figuring, hell, if she doesn’t ask now she never will, Killian says, “So whatever happened between you and Taako?”

Brad chokes on a mouthful of cider, starts to cough. She whacks him solidly between the shoulders and he puts the bottle safely down between his feet, before looking full at her, his face bleached of expression.

“What are you talking about?” he says, hoarse.

“You guys snuck around for ages and then you just stopped,” Killian says, seeing little reason to prevaricate. “And you showed up to the hangar when they got back from Wonderland but you ducked out before any of them saw you.”

Brad’s face has grown progressively grimmer throughout this short speech and he says, voice gone still and quiet, “Are these all things that are widely known among Bureau employees?” The stiff formality is back, painfully at odds with the easier mood from moments ago. Killian squints at him.

“Not really.” Brad relaxes, minutely, but still looks ready to either yell, or bolt. “Carey told me how squirrely he was acting when he was on the way to see you, when the elevator went out. And once she pointed it out was kind of hard _not_ to notice it. I didn’t say anything, though. Not really in the habit of gossiping about other people’s business. But I doubt Lucretia would have missed it.”

“No,” Brad says, heavily. Killian would nudge him again but something warns her against it, and after a few breaths he says, “It wasn’t ever particularly formal. And then I heard about his date.” He sighs. “I just understood that to be the expiry of it.”

“You’re not being very motivational,” Kilian says - keeps her tone gentle, to keep spite out of the joke. It doesn’t seem as though sincere sympathy would be well received.

Brad laughs, a real one, and she’s startled to realise she can’t ever remember hearing it. “No, not really,” he agrees, and the stillness in his voice remains but his tone sounds much lighter at least. “I’m afraid the whole arrangement was quite out of character.” He smiles at her, small, but sincere. “The last I heard he’d found other things to occupy himself with. And then- well.” He gestures at the cairn. “Events overtook us somewhat.”

Killian finds herself lingering on that ‘us’, whether it’s just a figure of speech or carries more weight, but then asks quietly, “How has it been going?” She knows, of course; it had been hard to miss Brad in the corridors, at Fantasy Starbucks in the morning, growing increasingly haggard.

“Awful,” Brad says, shortly, and leans over to pick up the whiskey. And then, all at once, “I can’t do anything useful for any of these people.” He takes a swig from the bottle, vicious and uncaring. “I don’t like feeling that way.”

“Powerless? Taako was an interesting choice, then,” she says, only half-joking.

“You’d think so,” Brad says, and pulls a wry expression. “Like I said, it was out of character.”

There’s a strange tone to his voice that Killian is intensely curious about, but she lets it sit for a moment, lets him collect his thoughts. He sighs, eventually, and says, “It was just one of those things. Bad timing, the dynamic wasn’t quite right. He moved on, and so did I.” He shifts, awkward, and says, “I’ve talked too much about myself.”

“No, no,” Killian says, and reaches out; nearly second-guesses herself, but thinks _to hell with it_ and throws her arm around Brad’s shoulders. “I wanted to know. We’re friends, I wanted to talk about it.”

There’s half a second where she thinks she’s done the wrong thing, but then Brad - he doesn’t relax, exactly, and he certainly doesn’t change posture. But he doesn’t push her away, either, and Killian takes that as a victory.

“I… am grateful,” Brad says, and it’s so painful and awkward and nevertheless genuine that the distant affection she had for him blooms into something stronger, real.

“Of course,” she says, keeps her tone easy, internally doing a fistpump about getting Brad Bradson to talk about his feelings. “There's a price, though, for me being an agony aunt, so you gotta help me move when me and Carey get a place.”

“I can do that,” Brad says, sounding relieved with the mundane turn of the conversation. “How is the house-hunt going?”

She sighs, as exaggerated as possible. “How much of the in-laws politicking do you _actually_ want to hear about, because I could keep you entertained for hours if you let me.”

A chuckle. “You know half of Human Resources was dealing with stupid arguments between employees, don’t you?”

“Is that an offer?” she smirks, leaning over to snatch back the bottle of whiskey.

"Let me worry about squaring away the affairs of a secret organization that was just revealed to the entire planar system," Brad says dryly, "and then maybe I'll be prepared to facilitate that conversation."

***

The last of the light is draining from the sky, the air having shifted from cool to biting some time over the last hour, by the time they’ve reached the bottom of both bottles. Beside him, Killian has laid back in the sand, has her eyes closed, a little smile dancing around the corners of her mouth, grinning at the memory.

“And then, I shit you not, she wrapped her arms around him and _threw_ him at the monster.”

“You’re joking,” Brad barks out.

“Swear to god,” she grins, pushing herself up and dusting off the sand as she shivers in the evening breeze. “I only saw part of it, but you can ask Magnus about it when you see him at the gala, he’ll tell you.”

Brad stiffens at this, the mood between them going slightly tense.

“You’re going to be there, right?” she asks - not that she wants to leave this evening on _that_ note, but-

“I’m handling most of the logistics, so yes,” he sighs, sounding vaguely defeated.

“So you know Taako’s coming, then?” she says, as gently as possible. “He’s made a big song and dance about how the boyfriend’s working that night, but he’ll be there, with the rest of them.”

Brad half smiles. “Of course. Our Guests of Honour.”

“And that’s…” Killian hesitates. “That’ll be okay?”

A sigh, and then another small, real laugh. “Killian, I’m not about to let our-” the barest frown, but it clears, “ _relationship_ get in the way of something this important for the entire organisation.” He shrugs, and says, bland, “I’m a consummate professional.”

She squints at him. “Brad Bradson. Was that a joke?”

“I have a terrible sense of humour,” he says, straight-faced.

“Oh, gods, it was? That was a joke, and a _bad_ one-”

“No-one will ever believe you,” he says, and finally grins at her, a flash of tusks in the dim light. “Come on, it really is getting dark.”

“You can't get out of this,” she tells him, as they start to walk away from the shore. “Let's catch up more often, I have to know if that was a one-off.”

“It was,” Brad says, but then adds, “but that would be nice. I'll… look at my schedule. Let you know.”

“Good,” Killian says, and claps him on the shoulder. “And don't try to wriggle out of it."

“I wouldn't dare,” Brad says, and smiles faintly. “You're bigger than me.”

**Author's Note:**

> Gulch and RQT both independently wrote variations on this particular theme and when we dropped them into group chat the response was "...combine them!" so that's what we did. Thank you to Goose for the beta!
> 
> The title is from [Moving Right Along](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIdUR9zs_Qc) by Something For Kate.


End file.
